The author is famous for being full of crap like this, she is utterly disregarded here.
Chinese UAV/UCAV development
- Thread starter AssassinsMace
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I think it is unlikely. A newly developed drone with turbofan engine is quite expensive. They can always use the WZ-8 if they want stealth, or they can modify one of the old J-6/J-7 if they just want supersonic. After all, these old planes are basically free.
Having said that, all drones, when they reach the end of their useful life, can be used for suicide cruise missiles or target drones, so these, many years into the future, can be used as target drones.
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Eh Minnie Chan's clearly a disinfo agent. However her usual writings contain some truths mixed in with strange inaccuracies like she'll get minor but obvious details wrong. She'll ascribe the incorrect engine, write the wrong designations, suggest information we consider incorrect etc.
I think he means combined cycle engine where the turbofan is combined with some other form of propulsion. This ties in with news for over two years of breakthroughs and testing in Chinese combined cycle engines.
A slightly larger and clearer photo.
1) Notice the Avic logo on the fuselage, along with the names of the institutes involved in the project. I can't make out the characters clearly, but the second line on the left might say Beijing (?) Aviation something and the third line seems to say Shenyang (?) Aviation. Maybe?
2) To me, the people in the photograph seem legit aviation people (i.e. engineers and administrators). They don't look like military fans or sales reps from a company that does mockups for theme parks.
3) Lower right corner, note the landing gear door (?) and the serration. What's that yellow bit on the fuselage?
4) So what's the context? Is this a mockup? It sure looks like a mockup to me, and if so, is this done to scale?
5) Where was this photograph taken? Notice the cross brace on the wall, which might indicate some kind of industrial facility. Funnily enough, it reminds me of the recent photo of Shenyang's stealth bomber mockup, which also features cross braces on the wall.
Looks like the software part is ready. It will be piloted by AI.
The computer image uses the Dark Sword.
Yep fully autonomous heavy UCAVs... Dark Sword/ Anjian also looks like it's optimised for supersonic air combat and speed. Wing sweep is dramatic. Dark Sword is easily the best looking combat aircraft ever designed... right above Flankers which sit well above F-22 in purely just looks (third place).
AI handling a great deal of Dark Sword controls and strategy forming in real time is to be expected from China. I mean China has admitted such for a while in clues and hints. J-20S is yet another example of PLAAF hedging. Of course human in the loop is not only redundancy but also in certain times, added capability. Machine learning UCAVs aren't going to be better than humans in every department until months/years later.
AI handling a great deal of Dark Sword controls and strategy forming in real time is to be expected from China. I mean China has admitted such for a while in clues and hints. J-20S is yet another example of PLAAF hedging. Of course human in the loop is not only redundancy but also in certain times, added capability. Machine learning UCAVs aren't going to be better than humans in every department until months/years later.
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